Scoop Friend

Everyone has their own, worst day of their lives. Depending on your own circumstances, your worst day can vary from a breakup, getting fired, a car accident or a losing a loved one. Whatever the case may be, it is your own, personal, worst day ever. As time goes by, that worst day changes as more awful terrible events happen. This is depressing, but the harsh truth about life. My, worst day ever, when I first became an adult was the day I moved out of my house, and then it evolved to my wedding reception where my mother hurled insults along actual wedding gifts at my guests. Usually I try to make a positive out of a negative and the wedding story, now twenty years later, still makes for a great story. As the years passed and new experiences took place, these events are just a small blip on my timeline. More traumatic events have overshadowed these and the tears of fresh pain have washed away the hurt of long ago.

When trauma happens to you, beware. You will gain a, Scoop friend. Scoop friend shows up knocking at your door with your favorite Starbucks, wanting to, “check in”. This is only because they have heard that you recently had a tragedy and they are dying to, get the scoop.

Scoop friend also shows up in happy times as well. She asks you to go out for drinks, and than, here it comes..

“Hey, I heard you are getting married! I cannot wait for your big day!” Scoop friend is generally someone that did not make the cut on your invitation list. She knows this and is trying to pop back up in order to have something to gossip about at her next social event, that she probably was not invited to either.

Rather it is positive or negative; Scoop Friend is always annoyed when she is the last to know. She pushes her way in and tries to get as much information, as quickly as possible, and then proceeds to pretend that you are best friends when she tells all your information to any mutual acquaintance. Once I had a scoop friend come over and comfort me after the loss of my child, and then ignore me for the next several months. Believe me, she did not miss the opportunity to pull up photos of her family posing with my son, and show them off to party attendies at an event we were both at a year later.

She had to show she was , “in the loop” to another party goer. Sadly, in her mind, we were friends. She came to my house days after he was born, and then days after he was gone, and all she wanted was to take photos, get details and then ditch me. The fact that she had the nerve to show off photos of my son and pretend she was in any way part of my inner circle baffled and offended me in a way I had not yet felt before.

No longer could I play nice. I explained that I felt slighted by her, that she shows up for events in my life and then goes M.I.A. Her response of course was, “you could have texted me.”

Funny, when we pulled up her cell phone, the last one of us to text WAS me. To make matters worse, Scoop friends usually love to talk crap about you when you stop giving them new material. This particular woman ran into my sister and had the nerve to tell her, “tell your sister hi, and I am sure she is mad that I haven’t texted her.” Further proving she learned nothing from our conversation.

Where do you meet Scoop friend, and how do they even get your phone number and address you might ask? Scoop friend commonly starts out as a casual acquaintance; maybe your kids are in the same class, they can be a neighbor, or coworker. Usually scoop friend starts as a forced contact. You meet and think they seem pretty nice and caring. Weeks, months or even years later, you start to realize that they only call you when something BIG is happening. You originally let this go, not to be petty and not wanting to disrupt the relationship due to the common thing you share (school, work, community) until one day you snap and decide to not tell this person a single ounce of what is happening.

It is magic, as soon as you stop feeding Scoop Friend, they disappear. It’s really that easy. You might get a text, call, or email a few months later trying to suck you back in.

“Miss you!” or “Hope all is well.”

Do not give in. Scoop friend does not care about you.